Kymriah treats most common type of childhood cancer, but it has a hefty $475,000 price tag

US health regulators have approved the first cancer drug that uses a patient’s own cells to fight cancer.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has for the first time approved a treatment that uses a patient’s own genetically modified cells to attack a type of leukemia, opening the door to what the agency calls “a new frontier” in medicine.

Oncologists described the drug, made by Novartis and marketed as Kymriah, as revolutionary. But it is priced at a shocking $475,000 per treatment.

A clinical trial to test a new cancer drug in patients with advanced solid tumours has launched in four centres across the UK, through Cancer Research UK’s Centre for Drug Development.

This early phase trial will test the safety and tolerability of the drug and establish the recommended dose for patients with a variety of cancers including advanced bowel, lung, ovarian, urothelial, pancreatic, breast, head and neck, and oesophageal cancer.

Researchers believe interacting with other people who are also having treatment reduces stress levels, leading to better survival prospects

Socialising with others who also have cancer, could potentially improve survival prospects, according to new research.

Patients undergoing chemotherapy who socialise with other sufferers have a 68% risk of dying within five years, scientists from the National Human Genome Research Institute have found.

This is compared to a 69.5% risk if patients are isolated from other sufferers during their treatment, the research adds.

Lead author Jeff Lienert, said: “A two percent difference in survival might not sound like a lot, but it’s pretty substantial. If you saw 5,000 patients in nine years, that two percent improvement would affect 100 people.”

A student in Africa has reportedly discovered an alternative treatment for an aggressive type of breast cancer.

Sandra Musujusu, who studies at the University of Science and Technology in Abuja, Nigeria, is developing an alternative treatment for a subtype of breast cancer commonly found in black women. The Sierra Leone native’s research was unveiled earlier this month when World Bank director Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi visited the West African university as a part of his assessment tour of the 10 African Centers of Excellence locations, funded to encourage research to benefit African countries facing problems.

Ovarian cancer deaths have fallen around the world, largely because of the widespread use of the contraceptive pill, according to a major new study.

A study by Italian researchers has found that the number of people dying from ovarian cancer has dropped over the past decade due to increased use of the contraceptive pill together with a decline in the long-term use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).